


Know Your Enemies

by Ilyshaa



Series: Know Your Demons [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Angels vs. Demons, Demon Summoning, Demon vs. Demon, Demons, Fallen Angels, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 19:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21481642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilyshaa/pseuds/Ilyshaa
Summary: What happens when you summon a demon and it turns out to be your mother?
Series: Know Your Demons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548376
Kudos: 1





	Know Your Enemies

Beep…

Beep…

Beep…

Everything hurts. Isabelle's head pounds, slow and sure with her pulse. Her ears ring with each incessant slow beep. She can feel a soft bed under her with heavy covers laid over her legs. The bed feels weird. She seems to be partially sitting up, like a temper-pedic bed. She tries to move her fingers. Sparks of pain dance up her arms. Her brows scrunch down and that hurts too. Is the beeping getting faster? She tries to turn her head but a spike of pain shoots up the back of her head. The beeping speeds again. What is that noise?? Her breath flutters quickly. Thankfully her lungs haven't been in pain too.

“Shh, shh. Breathe slowly.” A soft deep voice says just to her left. He sounds a few feet away, out of arms reach anyway. “Don't try to move. You've been through a lot.”

Her breath slows a bit and she manages to stop trying to move. The beeping slows.

“There you go,” the disembodied voice says approvingly. “You won't hurt if you don't keep trying to move so much.” He sounds like someone's grandpa, but not hers. Anger blooms in her chest. Her grandfather would never advocate such complacency. She braces herself mentally and forces her eyes open to slits. 

That was a mistake! Shards of pain shoot through her eyes into her skull. She huffs and lets her lids fall shut again. The pain quickly subsided after she closes her eyes. Isabelle pants harshly, frustration and anger piling up inside her. The beeping increases again.

“Ok, ok.” The voice sighs and she hears a chair creak. He must have stood up. Quiet steps move away from her. “Just wait one more second.”

Almost immediately she hears a distinct ’click!’ and the background light filtering through her eyelids disappears. Isabelle sighs as the tension drains from her. She hadn't realized how tense she was all over from the room’s light. Her fingers twitch again but there's no pain. She risks her eyes. This time the stabbing is just an annoying pressure. It takes a beat for her eyes to focus but soon she can look around. She's in a hospital room. Finally the noises make sense, they have a heart monitor on her. She lets her head tilt to the side, the shooting pain in her skull now just minor jolts that pass quickly.

A man in scrubs stands at her bedside, by her knee. Isabelle takes a moment to study his face as he sits down gingerly on her bed. He's handsome, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. He smiles warmly at her, wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. He's older than at first glance. “Good morning, Sunshine.”

Her eyes narrow and her brows furrow. She's never seen this man in her life. Why is he giving her pet names?

“Do you know where you are?” His voice is low but strong.

Isabelle tries to speak but as soon as her throat flexes pain shoots up into her skull and down into her stomach. Nausea follows immediately.

“Don't try to speak,” he stands and lifts something from the chair nearby. He settles again and slips a firm flat object into her grip. It's smooth on one side and rough but not scratchy on the other. He sounds worried and compassionate when he speaks next. “I am sorry, Sunshine. I should have warned you. You tore your vocal chords. EMS said you were screaming. We had to do emergency surgery to repair some of the damage.” He hesitates but then continues. “The doctors aren't sure if your voice will recover.”

The heart monitor chirps quickly with her now racing pulse. Memories flood back. There was shooting pain in her side and chest, but she didn't know why. She and Heather were trying to get to Arissa. There were fiery orbs in the sky. They had weapons. Arissa's house burned down. No, her house was destroyed by the orbs! Was Arissa in it? Where is Heather? She wasn't conscious. She looked dead. Tears spill down Isabelle's cheeks as she sobs silently.

The man squeezes her fingers gently and rubs her knuckles with his thumb. The caress is inordinately comforting and after a long while Isabelle calms. She looks to him again, her vision still blurred by tears.

  
“I'm sure you have a lot of questions. That's why I brought you the little white board.” This guy has the most patient bedside manner of any doctor she's ever seen. It's almost unnerving how thoughtful he seems. “We have some questions too, but first things first; we don't know your name.”

That gets her attention. She furrows her brows at him and scrunches her mouth in a confused expression.  
  


“You didn't have a purse or bag when they brought you in. No identification on you at all. Or on the one they brought you in with,” he inclines his head to her side.

Her heart jumps into her throat and she turns away from him to look, pain be damned. There's another hospital bed a few feet away. She can hear a faint steady beep emanating from that direction. She can see the top of a blond head peeking between machines. Heather! She's alive! Isabelle can't stop the tears that hit her cheeks as she lays back, relief laying over everything and soothing much of her aches. She turns her eyes back to the man when he speaks again.

“So you do know each other.” He sounds like he just discovered a clue. “You were brought in together. In fact you seem to be linked.” He scoots up the bed, close enough that he could touch her face if he wanted. Instead he takes her hand again. “It was touch and go for a bit when you came in. She's in a coma, and she's stable.But you…” he sighs as if remembering is painful. “Your vitals crashed when they moved you into surgery. I had them move her here, to the recovery room, so she would be close by. It seems to have worked.” He trails off, a relieved smile on his face. He just looks at her, as if the conversation were at a natural end.But it's not.

Isabelle has been laying there trying to wait for him to answer her questions but he's missed the biggest one. She grips his fingers firmly, digging her nails into his palm as she grits her teeth. She pulls herself up, clawing her way up his arm until she grips his shoulder. Her eyes bore into his. “_Where’s Arissa_?” Her throat burns after the effort. She pants and falls back in the hospital bed, barely keeping more tears from falling.

His brows rise and push together, making him look younger in his confusion. His voice comes out soft and he sandwiches her fingers between his hands. “I don't know who that is. Is that a friend of yours?”

Isabelle’s head falls back and she huffs in frustration. She sits up a little and grabs the whiteboard. His face breaks into a smile and he offers an open marker. She scribbles her name, then her mother's name and phone number. She pushes the board at him and points at the door, her brows low over a thunderous expression.

“I'll come back to check on you later.” His shoulders slump and he leaves, taking the small board.

As soon as the door clicks shut Isabelle pushes the blankets off her legs. They changed her into a hospital gown. They probably had to because of the surgery. Where did they put her clothes? She’ll have to find them. She follows the IV line from her hand to the bag. She sighs at the small miracle, it's on a portable stand. She throws her feet over the side of the bed, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass. The heart monitor beeps irritatingly with her pulse. She can feel her pulse rushing in her ears, she doesn't need it beeping out loud too!

She slides to her feet, keeping a white knuckle grip on the side of the bed. Her legs wobble under her. They are so weak! She hisses in anger at how long it takes to get her legs to cooperate. Finally she grabs the IV trolley and takes a shaky step towards Heather.

The cords to her heart monitor pull taught and almost make her fall. She hisses again as she pulls the cords free. The monitor falls silent and she rolls her eyes as she makes her way around the bed. Should have pulled them off ages ago.

The tiny beeps from Heather’s monitor call her like a siren song. She hesitates at the end of the bed, looking at her friend. Heather looks so tiny laying in the hospital bed with cords and tubes all tangled around her. Her eyes are closed now, but her chest rises and falls in a steady, shallow rhythm, confirming the heart monitor’s declarations. Isabelle can't stop the tears as she shuffles closer and crawls into bed. She settles next to her best friend, exhausted at the effort to get there. She lays an arm across her, her hand tucking around the thin girl’s shoulder. Isabelle's eyes drift closed. Her body feels so heavy. She falls asleep almost instantly. She's so deeply asleep she doesn't notice Heather’s heart monitor’s increasing pace, or that Heather gasps when she opens her eyes.

  
She glances around the room groggily, then realizes Isabelle is in bed with her. Heather's breath escapes in a sigh as she curls towards her best friend, her arm sliding around the larger woman. Sleep settles back over her easily after she snuggles her face into Isabelle’s hair.  
  


~  
  


Arissa finds herself in inky blackness, again.

She doesn't have a body, again...

But still, without a body, there's nothing that hurts. She remembers she had been stabbed… No, that was before. This time her house burned down. Her mother burned their house down! A spike of panic shoots through her. Did she die for real this time? Where's her mother?

She feels a slight pull at the center of herself. She looks around for a source but there's nothing. Just more blackness. What direction was the pull? Maybe she did die. Would she remember it if she did?

“Arissa,” a familiar voice slides along her consciousness.

“Mom??” Arissa tries to look around for her mom, but without a body, without eyes, there's nothing to see. “Mom where are you?” Panic tinges the edge of her voice. Is it her voice, or her thoughts?

“I'm here, Beloved.”

“Where is here? I can't see!”

“Shh, shh. It's ok. You're not hurt.” Merry’s voice slides around Arissa, smoothing her jangled edges.She continues speaking in that measured voice. The deep, gravelly, warm–ember voice grounds Arissa, even in this blackness. “Do you remember the first time you used your Sight? Remember how much there was to See and how disoriented you were?”

“I remember. There was so much. I wasn't in my body.”

“Very good.” The praise eases some more stress. “Right now is just the same. You're not focused, and you're not in a body.”

“Should I activate my Sight?”

“Not yet.” Arissa can practically see her mother holding up a hand. She would have her ’we are learning, don't go off on a tangent’ expression. “First you need to come through.”

If Arissa had a body she would scrunch her brows and tilt her head. “Come through what?”

There is a sound of hollow logs falling down a cliff and bouncing off bare rocks. It takes a second but Arissa realizes her mother is giggling.

“My Beloved Light, you are between. You must come through before trying to make a body.”

There's that pull again. It tickles at every part of Arissa's mind, gentle and inviting and familiar. She tries to grasp at whatever caused it but it's gone. “How do I do that? I feel stuck.”

“You and I are connected, Beloved. Follow your connection to me.”

Arissa gets a flash of being suspended in a still and silent place like this. She had a thick cord in her hands and called out, bringing her mother to her in a dire moment. She can feel her focus shifting. “I'm going to try…” She mentally rolls up her sleeves and reaches to find the cord. Nothing happens. She doesn't have hands here, how can she grab anything? Frustration spikes along her mind. She would growl if she had a throat.

“You're doing great, honey. Try again.”

Merry's words smooth Arissa's nerves, like petting a cat smoothes it's fur back into place. Arissa wants to be closer to her mother.

That gentle tug happens again. She can feel it pluck at every corner of her being. This time she reorients with it. She follows that tug, condensing around it like water vapor forming a raindrop and following gravity back to earth. A thousand thousand of her coalesce around that tug and move towards it.

Then she's falling.

Plunging.

Careening down down down to her mother's embrace.

Then through it.

Arissa's fall stops abruptly as she slams into the ground. A thousand thousand times she hurtles downwards. Flailing as she falls, screaming, through her mother's arms to land gracelessly at her feet.

’Disoriented’ is not strong enough. Arissa is dizzy into every aspect of her being. She has a body again. Maybe? A thousand thousand of them. All shifting together and breaking apart. A thousand hands push at the ground, trying to sit up. A thousand more try to rise to her knees. She feels like she's laying on her back on her face kicking her side, crumpled up, smooshed together, and splashed across the ground. Countless hands try to cover her faces, only to slip past them and smack into chins, or ears, or elbows.

“There you are, Beloved Light. That was beautifully done,” Merry praises gently.

The praise flows over Arissa, calming her but not helping her feel more coherent. A thousand thousand eyes lift to see her mother, visible from a thousand angles. If she had a whole body she would vomit at the tangle of images overlaying one another, vying for prominence, pushing their sensory information along infinite nerves to supplement the visuals.

Merry crouches, reaching gently into the splash of daughter puddled at her feet. Her fingers dip into the surface and lift a wave up. She lets it shift until a semblance of a face appears. “Hello, daughter of mine.” Her red eyes glow brightly and a deep smile sits on her thin lips. Her dual fangs show when she speaks but it doesn't feel menacing, it just feels like the face of her mother.

“M– m, mo– Mom! o– om, om!” Her voice echoes in her own ears, a thousand voices overlaid. Arissa's vision swims. She can see her mother, a few hundred of her, crouching over her. Arissa has never seen her mother look so pleased. She tries to stay very still, marshaling her thoughts together in an attempt at cohesion.“B. b bod–body? dy? y?” Only a hundred voices overlay now.

Merry’s smile grows impossibly deeper and she leans forward, laying a kiss on her daughter's head. “I am so proud of you, daughter.” Her eyes flit to the side for a moment, then pause a little too long. A spike of fear lances through Arissa. She suddenly doesn't feel safe. Merry looks back to her daughter, holding her chin like she always does. “We cannot linger. This will help, for now.” She tightens her grip on Arissa's chin and lifts her other hand, laying it over her daughter’s many faces.

Arissa hears a small ’click’ and flinches at the singular nature of the sound. No overlays! She lifts her hands–there's only two!–to look at them.

“Aah!!” She jumps back with a shout. Instead of hands she saw scratches. Like a rough drawing, scribbled in haste or anger on a page. Two long, skinny, appendages lift when she tries again. The edges shift and fluctuate constantly. They look like a hand–drawn animation, with little regard to continuity from one frame to the next. “…what is this?”

Merry doesn't answer. She simply gathers the animated mess into her arms and starts walking. Her strides are large, frantic even, and bordering on un–graceful. Arissa stiffens and leans into her mother's shoulder, trying to stay as small and easy to manage as possible. As they move she realizes they are in a forest, but it's weird. The trees are tall, with enough room between each to walk easily, but you can't see very far ahead, and the trunks are glossy.

“What is this place?” She's grateful for the singular voice. This jagged shifting body feels strange. She feels like she's swimming. Well, she feels like she's wearing a person shaped bag, and it was filled with water after she got in it.

“The Glass Woods,” Merry doesn't slow her pace, but the trees are getting closer together, forcing her to make a decidedly not–direct path through the woods. “Its home to the Hollowmen. We do not want to be found here.”

“Why not? What's wrong?”

Merry huffs a chuckle and a smirk settles on her face. “I am a declared enemy of Kar–Ayna. Last time I was here I–” she shakes her head, the deep smirk makes Arissa think she's proud of what she's about to say. “I ate their king. They weren't happy for that.”

“Woah, mom…” Arissa can't even imagine her mother using violence on anyone, let alone doing what she just confessed. On the other hand she threw their couch clear through the wall and burned the house down. Arissa has a lot to learn about her mother.

Merry slows her pace as the trees thin, then stops entirely when they reach the edge of the woods. A low growl rumbles in her chest. Arissa looks over then flinches at the short clearing followed by a sharp cliff. Merry lowers Arissa and gently sets her on the ground next to a tree.

“Wh? Mom, what are you doing?” Arissa's body slumps against the trunk. She tries to sit up be ends up just sloshing an arm over her lap. This body feels coherent, but it really is like a bag of water. Its holding her together but other than that its not cooperative at all.

“’Mom’?” A condescending voice calls out well behind Merry. “What is that about, Dev’alchak?”

Arissa jumps at the voice. Were they followed? Ambushed? Merry bares her teeth and stands, her eyes glow brightly as she faces her foe. Arissa looks past her mother to where the voice was.

There by a tree stands a man, arrogance wafts off him like too much cologne. He is tall and thin, with blue tinted skin. Arissa can't tell it's that's his natural color or if he's wearing body paint. He carries two wicked looking swords, one in each hand. The guard of the sword flows like water from the blade over the grip. His style of dress is unlike anything she's ever seen. His long, straight hair falls freely around his shoulders. A high collared bolero covers his pale neck and shoulders, but his chest is only hidden by a few straps cris–crossing their way down his torso to the waistband of his loose pants. His arms seem painted in gold designs from wrist to bicep. He shrugs then lifts a sword at them.

“Not going to answer? No matter. You're weak, I see, and trespassing where you're forbidden. You'll both be dead in a moment.” His voice grates on Arissa's nerves. She's never seen this guy before and she wants nothing else but to slap that arrogant smirk off his face.

Merry stands in front of her daughter, hands loose at her sides as she faces the newcomer. “Your name, guard.”

“What?” His grinning arrogance turns to confusion for a second.

“I would have your name, before a fight.”

“I am Celik.” He scoffs, the grin reappearing smoothly. “I don't need yours.”

Merry's eyes flash and she smiles deeply. If he had any sense he would be threatened. “Where are your guardsmen, Asi’Celik? Surely they wouldn't leave their prince undefended.” Merry raises a brow and takes a single step towards the youth. Everything in her body language reads relaxed and slow, as if she were a professional negotiator trying to talk a jumper back from the edge.

Celik’s brows rise at her words. He only has a heartbeat to feel the surprise before Merry leans forward. Her body disappears in a blur then she's upon him, slipped through his guard as if he had none.

She slides up his body, inches away from him when she comes back into view. A hand threads into his hair, gripping tight at the base, then yanks back. Another arm reaches around to grab the cris–crossed straps at his back, pulling his torso to follow his head, down to the ground. She lands atop him, her wispy robes billowing then reforming.

He yelps in surprise, but it sounds distorted, like it escaped his mouth and was pulled back in. He has wits enough to stab his swords into her back, but that doesn't seem to bother her. Another set of arms slither out from her shoulders, grab his wrists, then pulls his arms taught before slamming them to the ground.

So many more arms appear then. Like she's made of arms! Her many hands grab his biceps, his chest, his hips, his knees, and his ankles, all pressing him down into the rocky dirt. Razor sharp claws sink into his flesh while others grab the swords, tossing them away as if they were nothing. He struggles vainly under her but he's well and truly caught.

“Know your opponent.” Merry growls into his ear. His struggles intensify, bare feet kicking dirt as they scrabble for traction. She leans up to see his face, her eyes hooded and unreadable as she looks down on her prey. “I am called the Red Death, young Asi’Celik.”

His eyes bulge and he looses what little color remains on his cheeks. “No,” he quakes, “you're dead!” His hands, empty of swords, ball into fists and he strains with all his might against her many arms. “You have to be dead!”

Merry chuckles. A deep humorless sound, like the breaking of icebergs. With that she bares her fangs and bites into his neck, teeth and claws ripping open soft flesh all over his body. She feasts on the deluge of his fear.She drinks in the blood from his neck, letting much of it spill down her face or splatter onto her clothes as his breath gurgles. Her claws tear through his chest and stomach, making a mess with his internal organs. She revels in his destruction.

His struggles taper quickly then stop. Merry sits up moments later, licking her lips and looking as satisfied as a cat, with brilliant red painted down her jaw and neck. The stains stand out against her dark skin and on the front of the shifting robes.

Arissa watches, horrified, as it plays out in slow motion to her eyes. It took less than thirty seconds from his first word to his utter defeat.

Merry stands from the body and returns to gather her daughter into her arms. Arissa trembles in her mother's grip while they walk to the edge of the cliff. Her mind reels at what she just witnessed. Merry hadn't bothered to wipe the blood from her face and it smears onto Arissa's water-sack body. Nausea follows soon after Arissa notices the smudges.

Merry crouches and another set of arms wrap around Arissa's body, gripping her daughter tightly to her chest. She leaps into the air, leaving the Glass Woods, and the defeated prince, far behind them.  
  


Arissa lays helplessly against her mother, aghast at the raw carnage unleashed on that man. She never thought she would see anything like that. She hopes her friends never have to. 

~


End file.
